Strange little Sri Lanka!

Hilarious Moments

Beer drinking monkey : At first he takes a sip!

Then he wants a little more than a sip..........

When he wants the entire glass %$$&&%#&!!!

.........Results in a very drunken monkey alas!

The squirrel with fondness for French toasts...."Je veux plus!!!"

Not my Dream Man...But a very titillated one.

The elephant who loves a bath!

After the shower, a nice lunch...Nice life!

Land of Buddhas........just in case you didn't know..here you go!

Quick thrills @ AuroVille.

We landed in Pondicherry on the morning of the 14th August. After a 20mins auto drive and 200Rs poorer we landed in Samarpan Beach house on ERC road at Auroville, right beside Repos beach. The guest house is not your regular Taj fare. Since the Italian owners were not in town, the caretakers were lazy, immovable and I thought sometimes a bit unusually unresponsive. But the guest house itself was very nicely located just beside the sea and the lounge of the guest house had a divine view with the gentle breeze of the sea fanning us continuously in an otherwise hot weather. The studio we stayed in was decorated with inexpensive but tasteful adornments and it did carry a lot of charm.

After a quick shower and 3 hours of waiting (courtesy lazy staffs again) we came to Repos / Auro beach only to be hugely disappointed by the beach. Unclean, unkept, lack of space to sit, no shady spot compounded by the gawking Indian tourist and the even more gawking local fishermen. We soon realised that a nice relaxing swim was not possible. So we counted our loses and went back to the guest house. Keeping in mind the objective of relaxation we had decided for this trip, we stayed & enjoyed the indoors thereafter.

The evening was spent in discovering pottery shops and french restaurant around Auroville. The next day we hired a bike (very lucky to found one though) and roamed around Auroville, starting from Matri mandir to the interiors .The houses in Auroville looked like the handiwork of some quirky & imaginative architects. They were very strange yet so appealing. The last evening which was also the Independence day was spent 3 hours at a pub in Pondicherry & watching fireworks in R.K Beach as a part of the celebrations.

It was a short & delightful trip.

One disgustingly crazy observation: We saw a boy casually pull down his pants and do his shitty business right at the edge of the sea. Done with his business, he simply waited for the waves to come and clean him naturally. No tissues nor "louta" required. Isn't that the heights of laziness?

View from Samarpan guest house

Bubbling away at Havelock- Part 2

The previous night we celebrated V's Birthday with rounds of whisky sours and Tom collins. Needless to say it was difficult to wake up the next morning for the scuba diving. I had to report an hour early for the same. Upon being instructed by V & V to wake them up before I leave, I took the most ungentle approach to do so....by banging loudly over their door.I must say I quite enjoyed it. After all, these ladies took the slightest of opportunities to catch a wink every now & then and it was getting on my nerves.

I stuffed myself with Pancakes drizzled with hot chocolate sauce and made my way towards Barefoot Scuba, about a km from Wild Orchid.The fresh morning air of Havelock was extremely refreshing. But I reached Barefoot with a little bit of apprehension and some trepidation. Anne, my french instructor gave me a lot of instructions, starting from the signs used underwater. I had a lot of question in mind but perhaps in addressing those I would just increase that little bit of nervousness that had started to set in. V & V joined us for their snorkeling expedition and after a bit of paperwork, we set sail for Elephant Beach.

Our scuba diving team assembled separately and we had about an hour or so of instructions. This was of course a regular practice done for safety. I was actually surprised at the number of protocols the divers and instructors have to follow. I am not going to reveal those and mar your enthusiasm. But brace yourself for the fins for in those, you will be compelled to walk backwards and not forward in the water.

With the tank hoisted on the back of your diving suits, the regulator in my mouth,the mask on my face, the sink weight around my body and the weight on my mind, I plonked in the water with the rest. I was by then seriously worried if I would be able to breathe normally in the water. As we went down meter by meter, Anne would instruct us to close our nose and blow hard. This would normalize the pressure in the ear and I could actually hear my ears pop, just like in the airplanes. My assigned buddy,Anand (who was doing his divemaster course) would now & then signal me if I was ok.

Was I ok.....?????I was more than OK. I was lost.....lost in the view the underwater unfolded as we went deeper & deeper inside the sea. The breathing through the apparatus became completely normal . The depth of the sea has a universe of its own and I knew then that I would never ever be able to completely describe the experience. I couldn't do it then, 9 months later I still can't do it now. The different color fish, the strange curious vegetation, the whitewashed corals...I actually saw a clown fish, the only fish I could identify , Thanks to NEMO! And yes they said it right, a different kind of peace prevails upon you when you have undergone an experience as such. God knows how, but I had a profound feeling of oneness when we made our way back as I sat on the tip of the boat looking towards nowhere in particular but the ever expanding horizon of the Bay of Bengal. Perhaps it was a tranquility of the life underwater, perhaps it was because it was the first time, as is with all first times....it transformed me.

After a bit of snorkeling , it was time to return and land on land. But we were not ready to finish this day yet. Over a cup of coffee and hot calamari, V, V & me along with another girl from Sweden had a hearty discussion about love, life, country, music ....the usual flow of talk that flows from one topic to another with all or no coherency. Joining us was the Director of Barefoot Scuba , Sean from Norway. Perhaps he made the discussion more lively and the evening more interesting.....I wont forget the naughtiness and the twinkle in his eyes when he spoke. Maybe one day we will meet again and talk and exchange thoughts on the various topics we left unfinished that evening.

Its amazing how there are these few days from your life you can remember clearly whilst sometimes you cannot recollect what you did yesterday.....I guess that's a point to deliberate......and that was how it bubbled away at Havelock!

From left: Anand, V, Me, Anne, Sean, V, & Elena.

Bubbling away at Havelock- Part 1

After months of preparation & planning with emails & calls

darting across Dubai & Bangalore,V, V & me finally landed at Port Blair

airport. The view from the flight gave us a glimpse of what lay ahead. And boy,were we excited!

As we made our way to the Port Blair jetty for a ride on the Makkruz catamaran, one could see how this charming little town with neat streets and smell of fresh ocean air was different not only from mainland India, also from the coastal regions of India.

The one & a half hour journey from Port Blair to Havelock was filled with endless view of deep blue Bay of Bengal with waves bobbing up & down. One could be forgiven to think it was a part of French riviera or somewhere in Caribbean if you didn't know where you were. While my friends were fast asleep during the journey, I jumped along with the rest of the over excited tourist scrambling & climbing towards any free space on the windows, just to click away some pictures!

The first approach of Havelock is greeted with the view of a small unmanned lighthouse.As you land at the Havelock jetty you are of course transported back to India when being greeted by a sight of a cow lazily chewing on a piece of garbage.

As we made our way to the beautiful Wild Orchid resort, we had sneak peeks of the bluest of blue sea amongst the coconut trees. Our first duty as a faithful tourist (which we performed quiet eagerly was to get into our swim suits and plonk into the sea just behind our resort. While lazing there, we were astonished to

see the beautiful blue-green light glowing on the top of the waves during the day.It is called bioluminescence and we never knew it can be seen during the day.

But nothing prepared us for the spectacular view of Beach no. 7 or as popularly called the Radhanagar Beach. The pristine, unpolluted, crystal clear water, white sands, green vegetation,lack of tourist, lack of hawkers....are just a few adjectives to describe.

I had read many articles on this particular beach but what the eye sees, only a little can be put in words. One has to see it to believe it.

As Andaman is tucked away in the eastern corner of India, so sadly the sunsets early. At 5.15 pm in November, it was already dark.

We made our way back to the resort which was about 8kms away, we stopped at the market. Havelock has approximately 95% Bengali population and they speak a dialect which is peculiar to an erstwhile district in Bangladesh. The government of India had re-settled them in Andaman giving them around 10 acres of land. Funnily enough the lands weren't really good enough other than to grow coconuts.Thankfully to the rising tourist industry, the younger generation of Havelock have found a livelihood of a different kind.

For dinner, which also happened to be V's birthday we settled for a locally caught mangrove jack fish & crabs. Beach No.7 (Radhanagar beach)

Thanks to the excellent culinary skills of Mr. Sheesha ,the head chef at wild orchid (& a fellow Bangalorean) and our voracious appetite , we happily demolished all of of it within no time. After all we had a day of adventurous day filled with scuba-diving & snorkeling ahead of us.More about it next time.....

Once upon a time @ Ums!

Growing up in the 90's, I as many others grew up seeing the exotic locales of Europe through the eyes of the Hindi movie industry. Remember Yash Raj's productions with our delightful actresses with ample bosoms , deep cut blouses, saris worn way below the "belt line".....swaying along the Steppes of Europe . As to how the flora and fauna of Europe could match our local sentiment of love & longing, I could never understand. But one thing was for sure, even with a Non HD quality view, 11 inches "Japanese" TV & VCR, I as the rest of India could see, those places were mind blowingly beautiful.

And so when I landed at 'Ums' in late April, a small & picturesque mountain village in Northern Italy, I could only think back of those times with nostalgia. The undulating valleys, the shadows of the clouds falling, the lush green carpet of grass spread across, interspeded with tiny yellow and white flowers, the forest filled with pines, the cute fairytale houses with the Dolomites/ Alps forming a perfect background with their snow capped peaks. Almost picture perfect! But this was real!

This part of Italy is more Germanic influenced than of Italian. As I settled in a mountain restaurant "Hofer Alpl" for lunch after an arduous 1 hour climb, I noticed that I am the only person with dark skin there. Hell I must the only dark skinned person for miles around. I was convinced about this when a puzzled 5 year old sitting at the next table asked his father, "Papa', perche' lei è marrone?"...." Dad, why is she brown?". Amidst our laughter, I thought life is funny, as I went in search of the exotic, I became the exotic.

The air was chilly when we left. As I tightened the shawl around my body , It flashed my mind... just how the hell did Madhuri Dixit wear those flimsy chiffon saris in this weather? Well! its just another thing I would never know!!!!

P:S- Attached are some pictures taken at Ums.

Cheerio!